AWS Simple Blue Timeline

This is a simple app (CloudFormation Stack) that sets up a Blue Timeline on your AWS Account. It allows you creating and persisting timeline messages (entries) on your own infrastructure.

This service is available as a CloudFormation template, and you can quickly launch it using the button below. Your timeline will be automatically configured to stream messages to timeline.blue, but you can customize the solution to use a different type of consumer for your timeline or choose not to use it at all.

Set it up

Architecture

API Gateway exposes an API endpoint for creating entries (timeline messages) and DynamoDB table to store them. Timeline keys are stored in the Systems Manager Parameter as a SecureString.

When creating new timeline entries (messages) they are automatically pushed to SQS Queue that by default is used by timeline.blue for message polling - CFN CustomResource registers your Stack in timeline.blue as a timeline provider.

Usage

Once CloudFormation Stack deployment succeeded, check its Outputs tab to get:

• API endpoint
• API key

To create a new message in your timeline, just send a JSON request, with a mandatory message field, to your ApiEndpoint. Set your ApiKey in the x-api-key http header.

curl -X POST \
  -H "x-api-key: ${ApiKey}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "message": {
      "foo": "bar"
    }
  }' \
  ${ApiEndpoint}

Timeline Initial Entry

To retrieve the Initial Entry of your Timeline, just click on the InitialEntryApiEndpoint link in the CloudFormation Outputs.

This Initial Entry should be treated as a source of your timeline when creating subscriptions, building contracts for instance at timeline.blue.

You can also read your public key from the Initial Entry to verify the authenticity of your messages.

Initial Entry format:

id: XXX
timeline: XXX
created: 2023-11-30T07:27:38.164Z
signature: XXX
message:
  type:
    name: AWS Basic Timeline with Secp256k1 Schnorr Signature
    sha256: 23aa0524e8c55087599917f05a25fc40fc18b25e8ae1de6b81329de7501727bc
  name: MyTimeline
  sqs: arn:aws:sqs:eu-west-1:000000000000:SimpleBlueTimeline-TimelineEntriesSQS-xxx
  publicKey: XXX